Re: [ARSCLIST] cataloging sound recordings

[Karl Miller <lyaa071@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 27 Apr 2005, Matt Snyder wrote:

> Actually, it is a fairly easy route; RLIN may not have worked for your
> inquiry about Koussevitsky conducting Copland's Third Symphony, but it
> worked for this. RLIN's record for the Schillinger collection at the
> Rodgers & Hammerstein archive of the Library for the Performing Arts,
> which mentions the piano improvisations, had a direct link to the online
> finding aid (as did the catalog record at NYPL).  Whether you consider
> that "easy" depends on how difficult it is for you to get access to RLIN,
> I would guess.

First off, I have spent many hours looking at the wonderful finding aids
produced by NYPL. I certainly understand that making a MARC record for
everyone of those would be cost prohibitive.

My point is that the process is indeed encumbered. Direct access to RLIN
and/or OCLC is not always available to everyone...even as Google enhances
its relationship with OCLC.

> Unfortunately the route is not so easy for the plethora of worldwide
> archival collections that not only don't have catalog records on RLIN or
> anywhere else, but don't even have complete finding aids, either paper or
> electronic,  because the archivists don't have the funding or time to do
> it. The issue of intellectual access to unique archival holdings, which
> are generally described in groups of items, is a rather different issue
> than that of access to the individually cataloged items of libraries.

I would agree but I still cannot wonder if it is not time to rethink the
methodologies which separate the world of individually cataloged items and
materials which are housed in archival collections.

There has been much discussion, and some MARC records which provide
pointer to finding aids...yet rarely, from my perspective, does any
modality provide full discographic information.

>From my perspective, not having "the funding or time to do it," will not
change. For me, the only solution is likely to be changing that which
could possibly be changed, namely the methodology for cataloging and the
navigation tools.

Karl